Dr Danielle Baillieu

“My whole role in the family was to be fine.” (participant, quoted in Chapman et al., 2026) It is a sentence that can sound like competence. Sometimes it is competence. Sometimes it is a survival strategy. When your brother or sister is autistic or otherwise neurodivergent, family life may quite reasonably organise itself around their communication, sensory, behavioural, educational or care needs. Appointments are arranged. Meetings happen. Professionals ask questions. Parents try to keep the...

Draft for review only — not for publication or scheduling If you have reached midlife and suddenly feel that your usual systems no longer work, you are not imagining it. Menopause does not create ADHD, but hormonal transition can expose or intensify executive-function difficulties that you have spent years compensating for. The “masking debt” of midlife For many women, ADHD has been hidden in plain sight. You may have achieved highly, arrived early, over-prepared, copied other people’s...

Draft for review only : not for publication or scheduling Hair pulling can be incredibly difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it. People often say to themselves, “Why can’t I just stop?” They may promise that this will be the last time, hide thinning areas of hair, avoid hairdressers or photographs, or feel ashamed when somebody notices. Yet trichotillomania is not simply a bad habit or a lack of willpower. Trichotillomania, sometimes called Hair-Pulling Disorder, is a...